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Sword Logic
Summary The Sword Logic is an overarching concept in Destiny that many people are able to tap in to for the purpose of accessing power and abilities. While technically a neutral power, it is used almost exclusively by the Hive or Hive affiliated forces, while also used by others like the Player Character infrequently. It is worshipped by the Hive as a core tenet of their moral and religious philosophy. The Sword Logic can be likened to the principle of Might makes Right. It asserts that existence is a constant struggle to exist, and that weaker entities incapable of defending their existence did not deserve it in the first place. The only way to make something good is to make something that cannot be broken, and the only way to find what cannot be broken is to attempt to break everything. The ultimate goal of this philosophy is to find the "Last True Shape", the last entity that has proven it's superiority over all others by outliving them and proving itself by killing for survival. Any strength must be taken and not given, for giving power dilutes it and makes it untrue due to the recipient never having proved themselves worthy of such an existence. Adherence to the principle of Sword Logic can allow individuals to gain a variety of different powers, as even abstract ideas such as laws, concepts, and causality can be rebuked by a powerful enough assertion of truth backed by the Logic of the Sword. Uses Here are effects able to be enacted by users of the Sword Logic: *Statistics Amplification: By killing their enemies, Hive and other Sword Logic users assert their superiority over the defeated foe and in doing so gain the strength that they had. It is through this that individual hive grow stronger, building up the power of many deaths to take on new forms. Gods of the Hive such as Oryx, the Taken King have a constant influx of strength due to collecting tithes of strength from lesser hive. It is also possible to gain power through knowledge. *Power Mimicry/Reactive Evolution: Sword Logic users can take positive attributes of those they kill for themselves. This manifests in different ways, such as The Warpriest gaining Taken abilities every time he kills everyone in the area with his Occulus, to Oryx gaining seemingly every positive aspect of his foes by killing them, ranging from their minds, strength, abilities, and experiences. *Self-Sustenance: Hive subsist off of death and death alone, with the Tithe system in particular being designed to grant Oryx a constant flow of sustenance. *Death Manipulation: The Sword Logic can be used to define someone as dead. *Pocket Reality Manipulation: With enough power, one can impose their will on the Ascendant Realm to carve out a Throne World for themselves. Particularly powerful individuals have even created infinitely large universes in this way. These Throne Worlds can be used as weapons unto themselves, with Oryx in particular being able to expand his into material reality to obliterate his foes. *Spatial Manipulation: Tying into the creation of Throne Worlds, one can assert their superiority over space with the Sword Logic. Some hive define it with their will, others cut through it to rend their foes and access new places. *Time Manipulation: Tying into the creation of Throne Worlds, Throne Worlds have their own time that is separate from the material universe. Powerful individuals can define time in their realms, controlling its flow and how it relates to the time of the material world. Crota cut a wound through time and space and was later thrown across history via that wound. *Matter Manipulation: Sword Logic can be used to empower the will to overcome and annihilate matter. Oryx was capable of splitting a quark on his sword. *Mind Manipulation: Throne Worlds can destroy the minds of interlopers, a manifestation of the questioning of every aspect of something's being under the Sword Logic. *Power Nullification: The Sword Logic can deny aspects of an opponent, like when Oryx killed Akka. At the time, Akka, Worm of Secrets was far stronger than Oryx and possessed powerful Sword Logic of his own, to the extent that he could make something untrue simply by denying it. Oryx overpowered this with his own assertion of existence and killed Akka and took his strength, despite how such a feat should have been impossible. Throne Worlds can also render an individual powerless to take any action at all besides waiting. Vex were also rendered unable to use their abilities due to the strange geometries defined by the will of Oryx. *Abstract Existence: The Darkness describes itself as the Sword Logic in purest form, and Oryx was close to only existing as an abstraction of the Sword Logic himself (explained in greater detail on his page). His sister Savathûn is experimenting with Sword Logic to result in her gaining strength whenever she is even thought about, tying herself to the concept directly. *Acausality: The Sword Logic is a paracausal power, and tapping into it allows the users to similarly defy regular causality. For most users, type 4 is what is warranted. However, in a particularly extreme case, Oryx, the Taken King was able to defeat causal closure entirely, causing him to end up unbound by any system of causality in a manner similar to The Darkness itself. This along with other support grants him type 5. *Negation of Acausality: Even the Light, which is unbound by any form of reason or causality, is forced to obey the Sword Logic. It is through this that Oryx could ascend in the first place by killing Akka, Worm of Secrets, leaving causality behind himself thereafter. *Reality Warping/Subjective Reality: With the Sword Logic, Akka and Oryx can deny a truth until it becomes a lie. Akka even seems to have denied its own death, existing as a parasite no matter how many times it falls to Oryx. The Sword Logic in general is predicated off of defining truth, and this truth is defined through destruction and the assertion of one's own existence. *Law Manipulation: The Sword Logic defines all laws in the Throne Worlds and even concepts such as the Light must adhere to it. Hiraks, the Mindbender is able to destroy his foes by "etching his harshest truths upon his enemies". *Conceptual Manipulation: Types 2 and 3. Hive can redefine their foes as dead, and such a redefinition is powerful enough to overpower even Mid-Godly Regeneration. Guardians that could revive from being erased across all Vex space so throughly that even memory of them outside Vex space was lost by Gorgon (Destiny) could not revive from the powerful deathsongs of The Daughters of Oryx, nor could most of the Ascendant Hive who heard it. Particular individuals can kill truths that fundamentally define the entire Ascendant Plane, with the Ascendant Plane consisting of numberless spaces beyond the material universe. Oryx is capable of redefining individuals on a fundamental level both via his power to Take (itself the ultimate manifestation of the Sword Logic) and just via power alone. *Existence Erasure: In asserting one's existence, one implicitly denies the existence of their foe. Individuals can use this to completely annihilate their opponents, and in the case of Oryx such power was likened to that of the Gorgon (Destiny). *Immortality/Resurrection: Every type except 10. Sword Logic can defeat age and injuries, with death being a non issue due to the impossibility of killing something synonymous with Death outside its own territory, Hive Gods can manifest in the material realm or send out echoes and shades, the death of an individual can be stored elsewhere to make them impossible to kill, become one with the Sword Logic and survive forever within those that inflict a true death on the user, store one's soul elsewhere and resurrect the dead, and some characters have an existence bound to the Sword Logic itself. *Regeneration: At leat Low-Godly. Ascendant beings can regenerate so long as their throne world is not destroyed, with their existence being tied back to an oversoul that can be wielded as a weapon. Certain individuals like Oryx's sisters survived even past true deaths in their throne worlds, but were left unable to really do anything until Oryx evoked their natures through acts of war and cunning. *Aura: A multitude of auras can be created via Sword Logic. *Resistances: Extreme might in the Sword Logic often impedes any sort of harm from lesser beings, given the nature of Destiny this results in a lot of resistances. This can range from the relatively modest, like The Warpriest being immune to any Guardian ability until he is surpassed in the Sword Logic, to Oryx, the Taken King and his resistance to nearly every ability in Destiny. *Taking: The power to Take is the ultimate manifestation of the Sword Logic at it's purest form: As power must always be Taken, this does it directly. It was a power initially only known to Oryx, the Taken King which was later usurped by others after his death. Oryx's usage would erase a foe and remake them with the power of The Darkness, bringing them back as Taken subservient to his will. Oryx notably is able to Take beings such as the Vex, who are acausal and exist simultaneously at every point in time. Here Oryx's ability to take is referred to as an "ontological weapon", likening it to the Vex Gorgons that can retroactively erase things from time across multiple timelines. Taken end up serving The Darkness and as such The Sword Logic of their own volition, as The Darkness strips away any fears, pain, inhibitions or other negative qualities they may have had before as it fundamentally remakes them anew, as a new shape. Taken passively exhude Taken Blight, spreading the corruption to others. The power to Take when used by Oryx included abilities such as Corruption, Law Manipulation, Conceptual Manipulation, Reality Warping, Existence Erasure, Mind Manipulation, Body Puppetry and Possession, though other users are not known to have been able to use the power as efficiently as Oryx and The Darkness can. Note While there has before been the idea that users superior in Attack Potency are capable of overriding the Sword Logic of others, this is a misunderstanding of how the ability works. The reason this comes about is because power in the Sword Logic breeds power in the physical sense, so those with powerful Sword Logic have high AP and not the other way around. In a few notable instances, Oryx killed the far stronger Akka by using the Sword Logic, and Crota killed the far stronger Oryx through the same ability. Weakness Firstly, not everybody is capable of using the Sword Logic at the same efficacy. The only known beings to have full usage of every single ability listed above at maximum capacity are The Darkness itself, and Oryx, the Taken King. Due to the machinations of Savathûn, the Witch-Queen, powers unknown even to Oryx may develop. As such, the abilities utilized by each user will be specified on their pages as there are many different types of Sword Logic with some being specific to certain individuals. Secondly, The Sword Logic is uncompromising and theoretically open to all. This allowed the Player Character to defeat powerful Hive gods such as The Warpriest, The Daughters of Oryx, and Oryx, the Taken King by tapping into the Sword Logic themselves and utilizing a traditionally Hive power against them. Even the Worm Gods are not immune, as shown when Oryx killed Akka and in doing so ascended to godhood. However, one requires knowledge of the existence of the Sword Logic to do this. Category:Destiny Category:Verse-specific Powers and Abilities